OPINION:
ABC just announced its selection of Univision anchor Jorge Ramos to serve as moderator for the network’s upcoming Democratic Party presidential debate.
Did you say debate? More like “The Why President Donald Trump Should Be Impeached” hour with your host! Jorge! Ramos! Cue applause. Let the panty tossing begin.
Ramos is the guy, remember, who has made it clear, “neutrality” on Trump “is not an option.”
And he’s done a good job of upholding that view — in one Iowa press conference, in August of 2015, so loudly in fact that Trump had to tell him to “sit down” and go on “back to Univision.” Ramos was ultimately told to leave.
Trump later explained, Ramos “just stands up and starts screaming. He was out of order.”
In August of 2017, Ramos had this to say about Trump, during a televised chit-chat with Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on CNN: “By pardoning [Sheriff Joe] Arpaio, President Trump is defending racism.”
In May of 2018, Ramos, in an interview reported by PRI, remembered the 2015 exchange with Trump in Iowa this way: “Yes, Donald Trump said, ’Go back to Univision.’ He really meant to go back to Mexico.”
He also advanced a false narrative that Trump called everybody from Mexico criminals and rapists — when what Trump actually said, back in 2015, was this: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting.”
Ramos summed it deceitfully.
“When [Trump] said that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists, I knew that he was lying,” Ramos said in this May 2018 interview reported by PRI. “And he was talking about me. That’s when I thought that not only as an immigrant and as a U.S. citizen, but that as a journalist, I needed to take a stand.”
This is what ABC has hired to moderate its Sept. 12-13 debate.
This is what ABC has determined to be a voice of unbiased reason — this is what ABC considers a fine example of a facilitator who can draw out the facts from the participants. Hmm.
Well and good. But if town halls and political debates are supposed to provide the audience with the opportunity to learn matters of importance about their looming and wanna-be leaders, then ABC has dropped the ball on that. Ramos is already outed, well outed, as one of the media world’s most noted, most unabashedly, most unashamedly Trump haters. All he brings to the debate table is a line of sneaky questioning aimed at prompting the Democrats to explain why Trump isn’t a racist, why Trump shouldn’t be impeached, why Trump isn’t all-things-evil — which of course gives the Democrats the chance to argue instead that Trump is indeed an evil racist who indeed should be impeached.
But at least Ramos might get to pitch his book, “The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era.” Right? Now if only Hillary Clinton could make a cameo. The circus show would be complete.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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